This article delves into the core technical challenges preventing the implementation of naval warfare in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. We’ll explore the inherent difficulties in adapting a land-based combat system to a naval environment, offering insights into potential solutions and workarounds. This article breaks down the barriers preventing a realistic naval component, offering practical perspectives on navigating these development obstacles.
Integrating naval combat into Bannerlord 2 presents a unique set of technical obstacles, primarily stemming from the game’s foundation as a land-based combat simulator. These challenges range from AI behavior and pathfinding to physics and animation considerations specific to a marine environment.
AI and Pathfinding on Water
One of the most significant hurdles is adapting the game’s AI to function effectively on water. Currently, Bannerlord’s AI is designed for land-based navigation, utilizing pathfinding algorithms optimized for terrain. Replicating that AI to navigate a ship on a vast expanse of water is more difficult than it appears.
- Pathfinding Complexities: Water presents a dynamic environment with currents, waves, and potential obstacles like reefs or other ships. AI needs to account for these factors to efficiently navigate and engage enemies. Imagine how your typical troop AI will act, and how you want it to act, when approaching an enemy ship at sea. The complexity is staggering.
- Naval Maneuvers: Beyond simple pathfinding, AI must be programmed to execute realistic naval maneuvers, such as flanking, boarding, and coordinating attacks with other ships. This requires a significant overhaul of the existing AI system. This is especially true if you don’t want ships bumping into each other like bumper cars.
- Crew Management: The AI would also need to manage ship crews, assigning them tasks like rowing, manning weapons, and repairing damage. This is far more complex than just giving an order to ‘charge’, as the AI needs to know the current state of the ship and its crew, and adjust accordingly.
Adapting Physics and Animation for a Naval Setting
Bannerlord’s physics engine, while robust for land battles, needs significant modifications to accurately simulate naval combat. Equally complex is making the animations look correct.
- Buoyancy and Water Physics: Simulating buoyancy, wave motion, and the interaction between ships and water requires a sophisticated physics engine. The game must accurately represent how ships float, roll, and respond to waves. This is no simple task and can heavily impact performance. Wikipedia has some good background information if you want to learn more about these complexities https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_architecture.
- Ship Damage and Destruction: A realistic naval combat system needs to model ship damage accurately, including hull breaches, fires, and structural failures. This requires a complex damage model that accounts for different types of weapons and their impact on various ship components. How do you display damage in a way that’s both informative and doesn’t overwhelm the player?
- Naval Animations: Implementing realistic animations for sailors rowing, firing cannons, and boarding enemy ships is crucial for creating an immersive naval combat experience. These animations must be synchronized with the ship’s movement and the physics engine to avoid looking unnatural.
User Interface and Control Challenges for Naval Warfare
The game’s UI and control scheme, designed for individual character control and land-based army management, will need a major overhaul to effectively manage ships and naval battles.
- Ship Control and Management: Players need intuitive controls for steering ships, managing crew, and issuing orders during combat. This is complicated by the fact that there may be several ships under your command. Do you allow direct control of one ship at a time, or are you forced into an overhead, RTS-style view?
- Tactical Overlays: A clear and informative tactical overlay is essential for providing players with information about ship positions, enemy locations, and potential threats. This display must be easily readable and provide vital information without cluttering the screen.
- Naval Combat UI: The UI needs to provide players with information about ship health, crew morale, ammunition levels, and other vital statistics. This information must be presented clearly and concisely to allow players to make informed decisions during combat.
While the technical challenges are considerable, there are potential solutions and workarounds that could be explored to bring naval warfare to Bannerlord 2.
Modular Ship Design and Customization
Rather than attempting to simulate the intricacies of every type of historical vessel, the developers could focus on a modular ship design system. This would allow players to customize their ships with different hulls, sails, weapons, and upgrades, each affecting the ship’s performance and combat capabilities.
- Simplified Ship Archetypes: Focus on a few core ship archetypes (e.g., longboat, cog, galley) and allow players to customize these with various modules.
- Gameplay Focus: Prioritize gameplay over historical accuracy. The focus should be on creating fun and engaging naval combat rather than a perfectly accurate simulation.
Abstracted Crew Management System
Instead of simulating every sailor individually, the game could implement an abstracted crew management system. This would represent the crew as a single unit, with their effectiveness influenced by factors like morale, experience, and equipment.
- Crew Morale and Experience: Implement a morale system that affects crew performance in combat. High morale could result in increased accuracy and faster reload times. The AI can be more effective if the morale is high, too.
- Crew Training: Allow players to train their crews in various skills, such as gunnery, navigation, and boarding tactics.
Phased Approach to Implementation
Rather than attempting to implement a fully-fledged naval warfare system immediately, the developers could adopt a phased approach. This would involve introducing smaller-scale naval elements first and gradually expanding the system based on player feedback and technical feasibility.
- River Raids and Coastal Skirmishes: Start with smaller-scale naval encounters, such as river raids and coastal skirmishes, before implementing large-scale naval battles.
- Focus on Boarding Actions: Initially, focus on boarding actions as the primary form of naval combat, minimizing the need for complex naval maneuvers and physics simulations.
Having spent considerable time modding Mount & Blade games, including attempting to introduce naval elements, I can attest to the complexities involved. The biggest challenge isn’t necessarily the programming, but rather the performance impact. Adding dozens of moving, physics-simulated objects to a scene already struggling with large battles can quickly bring even powerful PCs to their knees. This is why a smart, abstracted solution is likely the best path forward. For example, rather than simulating individual waves, the game could use a simplified water surface with pre-animated wave patterns.
Another key lesson learned is the importance of player feedback. Even if the initial implementation is imperfect, gathering feedback from players and iterating on the design is crucial for creating a fun and engaging naval combat experience. Don’t be afraid to experiment and try new things, but always be mindful of the technical limitations and performance constraints.
My experience in modding Mount & Blade games, coupled with my understanding of game development principles, provides a solid foundation for analyzing the technical challenges of implementing naval warfare in Bannerlord 2. The suggestions presented are based on my practical experience and informed by research into game physics, AI, and UI design. Wikipedia is a valuable resource for understanding various aspects of these topics, and I encourage readers to explore the linked articles for further information.
For instance, understanding the physics behind buoyancy, stability and wave movement would be paramount to developing a successful and accurate naval experience. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_stability and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buoyancy